Joshua Karsh

Biography

Joshua Karsh joined M&S in 2020, opening up the firm’s Chicago office. In his 30 years of practice, Josh has represented all kinds of clients—individual workers and nation states, community-based organizations and litigation classes with tens or hundreds of thousands of class members, sole proprietors and large companies. He is a seasoned trial and appellate litigator, has tried multiple cases to verdict (before both judges and juries), arbitrated and mediated cases, and briefed and argued appeals across the country.

One federal judge has praised Josh for doing a “spectacular job. He [is] knowledgeable about the facts and the law, articulate, honest, sensitive to the clients he represent[s] and respectful to and respected by his opponents … [earning] my highest recommendation.” Another has praised him for his exceptional tenacity, stating: “I want to tell you I’ve never seen such litigation in 11 years on the bench that was more difficult than this one … I actually expected, to tell you the truth, at some point that the plaintiffs would just give up because it was so hard, but they never did… And, in fact, they achieved a settlement of the case, which I find remarkable under all of these circumstances.” A state court judge who hired Josh to represent her personally has praised him as “a brilliant, highly skilled and experienced litigator.”

For clients he has represented as plaintiffs, Josh has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars. On behalf of defendants, he has successfully prevented what would have been crushing judgments.

Mostly, Josh likes to stir up “good trouble” (as Congressman John Lewis would call it)—by bringing cases that advance social justice, curb fraud and make markets more efficient, or make government and corporate interests more responsive and transparent. Josh has litigated myriad kinds of claims, including in the areas of employment discrimination; voting rights; police misconduct; whistleblower and False Claims Act litigation; consumer protection; free speech (First Amendment); stock fraud, commodities fraud, and shareholder derivative suits; antitrust law; RICO; labor law; partnership disputes; insurance coverage disputes; and immigrant rights.

Before joining M&S, Josh was the Legal Director for the National Immigrant Justice Center. Before that, he was a partner and shareholder in a high-powered litigation boutique in Chicago for almost twenty years.

Josh is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School and Yale University, and clerked for United States District Court Judge Hubert L. Will. He is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He has been heralded as an Illinois Super Lawyer® and listed on the Illinois Leading Lawyer Network List.

Josh has served on the Boards of Directors of the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the Jewish Council on Urban  Affairs, and as President of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Illinois, where he lives with his wife and two sons.